System and method to improve memory usage in virtual machines running as hypervisor guests

ABSTRACT

A system and method to improve memory usage in virtual machines running as hypervisor guests. In accordance with an embodiment, the invention provides a system for changing the memory usage of a virtual machine on request from a hypervisor, comprising: a hypervisor; a guest operating system executing inside the hypervisor; a communication channel between the hypervisor and the guest operating system; a balloon driver in the guest operating system; a virtual machine for executing a software application; a communication channel between the balloon driver and the virtual machine; a memory space or heap for use by the virtual machine in storing software objects and pointers as part of the software application; and a compacting garbage collector for use by the virtual machine.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains materialwhich is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has noobjection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent documentor the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and TrademarkOffice patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyrightrights whatsoever.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The invention is generally related to virtual machine environments andother run-time environments, and in particular to memory usage withinJava and other virtual machine environments running as guests within ahypervisor.

CLAIM OF PRIORITY

This application claims the benefit of priority to U.S. ProvisionalPatent Application titled “SYSTEM AND METHOD TO IMPROVE MEMORY USAGE INVIRTUAL MACHINES RUNNING AS HYPERVISOR GUESTS”; Application No.60/970,834; filed Sep. 7, 2007, and incorporated herein by reference.

BACKGROUND

Server virtualization can be used to partition a single physical serverinto several virtual servers, wherein each virtual server can run itsown operating system (OS) and set of applications. The softwareresponsible for managing the virtual servers is generally referred to asa hypervisor. A system administrator can configure the hypervisor togive each virtual server its own share of the physical resources, suchas RAM or CPU time. In this manner multiple copies of an operatingsystem think they are each running on their own server, when in realitythey are sharing one physical server. An operating system running withina hypervisor is generally referred to as a guest to the hypervisor.

One of the primary uses for virtualization technology is to improveserver utilization. A server application running alone on a serverseldom makes full use of the server. For example, if two applicationsthat each use 40% of a server capacity could be run on the same server,then only one physical server would be needed instead of two physicalservers, with a corresponding reduction of energy consumption and spacerequirements.

Server virtualization is not needed to aggregate several applications onthe same server, so long as the applications all require the sameoperating system and libraries. Unfortunately, many legacy serverapplications require different operating systems, or different versionsthereof. In these instances the only way to run several of these legacyserver applications on the same server is to use a hypervisor to performserver virtualization. In some instances the hypervisor can also provideservices that are not normally available in operating systems, such asguaranteeing that a certain amount of the server resources are availableto one guest, but not to another less privileged guest. With severalphysical servers, each running a hypervisor, the hypervisor on oneserver can move a guest to another server. This can be used toaccommodate changes in application workload or necessary upgrades orrepairs of servers. Examples of server virtualization technologycurrently available include VMWare and XenSource.

Since an idling server often uses almost as much energy as a workingserver (in contrast to, for example, laptops which try to save energydue to battery considerations) aggregating guests can providesubstantial energy and space savings, which immediately translates intolower costs. Therefore a common project in many information technologyor IT departments is data center consolidation. Data centerconsolidation is also driven by necessity, for example it is often notpossible to add more power to the computer center or there is no moreavailable server space. However in the long term perspective putting oldapplications and operating systems onto modern hardware usinghypervisors is probably not an efficient solution. More intelligentapplications that cooperate with the underlying operating system and thehypervisor are needed to fully exploit the data center resources in thefuture.

In contrast to virtual servers which emulate an already existinghardware design, virtual machines are abstract computers for whichapplication software can be compiled. The virtual machine is thus anabstraction level for application software that is consistent betweendifferent hardware and operating system combinations. Most of thecomplexity in running the same application on different platforms ishandled by the virtual machine, and therefore the virtual machinebecomes a very complex piece of software. Modern virtual machines needto manage code generation for the particular processor, operating systemdependent resources such as threads, networking and file system. Thevirtual machine also manages the heap, within which allocation andfreeing of virtual machine objects is performed. Examples of virtualmachines include the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and implementationsthereof, including the JRockit JVM, and the Hotspot JVM. A large portionof today's server applications are written in Java and are executed onsuch virtual machines. The current trend with data center consolidationrequires virtual machines to behave well when run as hypervisor guests,and contribute to the resource savings effort.

SUMMARY

Disclosed herein is a system and method to improve memory usage invirtual machines, or other garbage collected runtime environments,running as hypervisor guests. Current techniques for hypervisor controlof guest operating systems severely affect the performance of a virtualmachine running inside the guest operating system.

An embodiment of the present invention addresses this problem byproviding a system and method to improve memory usage in virtualmachines, or other garbage collected runtime environments, running ashypervisor guests. In accordance with an embodiment, a system isprovided for changing the memory usage of a virtual machine on requestfrom a hypervisor, comprising: a hypervisor; a guest operating systemexecuting inside the hypervisor; a communication channel between thehypervisor and the guest operating system; a balloon driver in the guestoperating system; a virtual machine for executing a softwareapplication; a communication channel between the balloon driver and thevirtual machine; a memory space or heap for use by the virtual machinein storing software objects and pointers as part of the softwareapplication; and a compacting garbage collector for use by the virtualmachine.

In accordance with another embodiment, the balloon driver can controlthe heap size of the virtual machine using the balloon driver to virtualmachine communication channel.

In accordance with another embodiment, the hypervisor can divideavailable physical RAM evenly or in a specified proportion between thevirtual machine heaps.

In accordance with another embodiment, the hypervisor can set differentheap sizes for different virtual machines to guarantee conformance toservice level contracts which are different for each virtual machine.

In accordance with another embodiment, the operating system can bespecifically tailored to run only a single virtual machine with noswapping and no other user processes.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

FIG. 1 shows an illustration of a system in accordance with anembodiment that improves memory usage of virtual machines running asguests within a hypervisor.

FIG. 2 shows a schematic of the memory layout in accordance with anembodiment, illustrating the Java heap before and after the heap sizehas been reduced.

FIG. 3 shows a schematic of the memory layout in accordance with anembodiment, illustrating when two OS/JVM guests are running within ahypervisor.

FIG. 4 shows a schematic of the memory layout in accordance with anembodiment, illustrating when a third OS/JVM guest has been added to thehypervisor.

FIG. 5 shows a flowchart in accordance with an embodiment, illustratingthe reallocation of hypervisor RAM.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Server virtualization can be used to partition a single physical serverinto several virtual servers, wherein each virtual server can run itsown operating system (OS) and set of applications. The softwareresponsible for managing the virtual servers is generally referred to asa hypervisor. A system administrator can configure the hypervisor togive each virtual server its own share of the physical resources, suchas RAM or CPU time. In this manner multiple copies of an operatingsystem think they are each running on their own server, when in realitythey are sharing one physical server. An operating system running withina hypervisor is generally referred to as a guest to the hypervisor.

One of the primary uses for virtualization technology is to improveserver utilization. A server application running alone on a serverseldom makes full use of the server. For example, if two applicationsthat each use 40% of a server capacity could be run on the same server,then only one physical server would be needed instead of two physicalservers, with a corresponding reduction of energy consumption and spacerequirements.

Server virtualization is not needed to aggregate several applications onthe same server, so long as the applications all require the sameoperating system and libraries. Unfortunately, many legacy serverapplications require different operating systems, or different versionsthereof. In these instances the only way to run several of these legacyserver applications on the same server is to use a hypervisor to performserver virtualization. In some instances the hypervisor can also provideservices that are not normally available in operating systems, such asguaranteeing that a certain amount of the server resources are availableto one guest, but not to another less privileged guest. With severalphysical servers, each running a hypervisor, the hypervisor on oneserver can move a guest to another server. This can be used toaccommodate changes in application workload or necessary upgrades orrepairs of servers. Examples of server virtualization technologycurrently available include VMWare and XenSource.

Since an idling server often uses almost as much energy as a workingserver (in contrast to, for example, laptops which try to save energydue to battery considerations) aggregating guests can providesubstantial energy and space savings, which immediately translates intolower costs. Therefore a common project in many information technologyor IT departments is data center consolidation. Data centerconsolidation is also driven by necessity, for example it is often notpossible to add more power to the computer center or there is no moreavailable server space. However in the long term perspective putting oldapplications and operating systems onto modern hardware usinghypervisors is probably not an efficient solution. More intelligentapplications that cooperate with the underlying operating system and thehypervisor are needed to fully exploit the data center resources in thefuture.

In contrast to virtual servers which emulate an already existinghardware design, virtual machines are abstract computers for whichapplication software can be compiled. The virtual machine is thus anabstraction level for application software that is consistent betweendifferent hardware and operating system combinations. Most of thecomplexity in running the same application on different platforms ishandled by the virtual machine, and therefore the virtual machinebecomes a very complex piece of software. Modern virtual machines needto manage code generation for the particular processor, operating systemdependent resources such as threads, networking and file system. Thevirtual machine also manages the heap, within which allocation andfreeing of virtual machine objects is performed. Examples of virtualmachines include the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and implementationsthereof, including the JRockit JVM, and the Hotspot JVM. A large portionof today's server applications are written in Java and are executed onsuch virtual machines. The current trend with data center consolidationrequires virtual machines to behave well when run as hypervisor guests,and contribute to the resource savings effort.

Java Virtual Machine Memory Usage

A Java program works on data structures referred to as Java objects,which in turn are stored in the Java heap. The Java heap is an area ofthe available memory that is reserved for Java objects only. New objectsare created in the Java heap, and when there is no more space left inthe heap, a garbage collection process is used to identify objects thatare no longer in use and the corresponding memory can then be reclaimedand used for new Java objects. The definition of the Java VirtualMachine does not specify any requirements on the performance or thebehavior of the garbage collection process other than basic assumptionssuch as: unused memory should be reused for new objects, and finalizersshould be called when objects are to be released. Additional informationabout the Java Virtual Machine is provided in “The Java Virtual MachineSpecification (2nd Edition), 1999”, by Tim Lindholm and Frank Yellin,incorporated herein by reference. The JVM implementer can thereforechoose to optimize different kinds of behaviors, depending on therequirements of the application software and the features of theparticular hardware used. A perfect garbage collector would beundetectable to the application software and the software user, in thatthere would be no pauses, no extra CPU or memory consumption.Unfortunately no such garbage collector exists, and a lot of work hasbeen invested into achieving high performance object allocation andgarbage collection with different algorithms for different goals.

In general, a larger Java heap provides better performance because itwill take a longer time to fill up the available memory, and there willtherefore be fewer garbage collections. The JVM can continue to functionas long as the Java heap is slightly larger than the application size.The application size is also referred to as the live data size, and issimply the sum of all objects known to be live after a garbagecollection. The application size cannot exceed the maximum size of theJava heap. If the application tries to exceed this limit then a fatalout-of-memory error is thrown and the JVM terminates.

With an application size that is almost the same as the Java heap sizethe JVM will spend most of its time garbage collecting, and theapplication performance will be very low. If the Java heap is twice theapplication size then the performance impact of garbage collection isusually reasonable or even low.

Operating System Memory Usage

Swapping is a proven operating system technique to allow allocation ofmore RAM than a server physically has available. The general idea ofswapping is that if one process does not currently access an area of itsRAM, then the operating system can instead store the contents of thatarea on disk, and give the memory to another process that needs memorymore urgently. If the original process later tries to access that areaof memory again, the operating system has to load it from disk intomemory again. (If the operating system is out of memory when the requesthappens, it may have to first swap out some other memory to disk tocomplete the request). In theory and practice, swapping works well in amulti-process operating environment for many types of processes.Hardware and operating system software have been designed and optimizedfor a long period of time to perform swapping efficiently, andapplications often have code and data that are more seldom used thanother parts of the same application.

Efficient swapping relies on the existence of areas of memory that arecurrently not actively used and that will not be accessed soon. Theseareas of memory may contain important data, wherein that data iscurrently not accessed, but in some distant future may get accessed.Successful swapping relies on the system's ability to find theseinactive memory areas. They stand in sharp contrast to the active memoryareas, as these are frequently accessed by the process. If most of thememory areas are active, then the system will be unable to findsufficient number of inactive areas to swap out, and will have to swapout some active areas. This swapping will result in severe performancedegradation, since pages have to be stored to disk and immediatelybrought back in RAM.

Hypervisor Swapping of Virtual Machine Memory

A hypervisor can decide to swap out pieces of a virtual machine, in thesame way as an operating system can decide to swap out pieces ofprocesses, to provide room for other virtual machines that have moreneed for memory. Moreover, in the same way that operating systemswapping is transparent to a process inside the operating system,hypervisor swapping is transparent to an operating system inside avirtual machine. The swapping process is transparent to the guestoperating system, apart from that the operating system may detect thatit sometimes runs slower. The operating system itself cannot detect thatparts of it are swapped out. Since the whole operating system runsslower, the processes inside the operating system will also run slower.

The reason for the hypervisor to swap out pieces of a virtual machine'smemory is generally the same as for the operating system to swap outpieces of a process's virtual memory, i.e., there is a fixed amount ofphysical RAM and the hypervisor tries to share these resources betweenthe guests in the most efficient way.

Successful, efficient swapping is highly dependent on which pages(pieces of memory) are picked to get swapped out. Ideally, the pagesthat will be used furthest into the future should be selected. Such analgorithm would be difficult to design, but fairly good approximationsexist for operating system swapping. For hypervisors the problem is morecomplicated. If the hypervisor used the same swapping algorithm as theguest operating system then the hypervisor and the guest operatingsystem would want swap the same pages. If the hypervisor swaps the pageout first, then it would be likely that sometime soon afterwards theguest operating system inside the virtual machine would decide to swapout the same page. The operating system swap would force the hypervisorto load the page again for the operating system to access so that it canbe swapped out again. Clearly, this is not a good idea.

It is better if the guest operating system tries to swap first, and whenthe operating system has finished swapping out pages, the hypervisor canswap out more if it needs to. This can be accomplished if the hypervisorcan trigger the operating system to perform swapping. Legacy operatingsystems normally have no functionality to receive commands from externalsoftware on how they should manage the RAM. Some hypervisors addressthis problem by inserting a device driver inside the guest operatingsystem that can communicate with the hypervisor. The hypervisor uses ahypervisor to operating system communication channel and tells thedriver that it wants the operating system to swap. The driver thenallocates non-swappable memory in the operating system. The effect isthat the operating system has to swap out other memory. The hypervisorcan detect the memory allocated by the driver and avoid allocating RAMfor it, thus reducing the total amount of RAM used by the guestoperating system.

This type of driver is sometimes referred to as a balloon driver, sincethe memory allocated by the driver can be seen as a balloon expandinginside the guest operating system and pushing out the processes to swapspace. The end result is better performance since the operating systemis better suited than the hypervisor to select the best pages to swap todisk.

Unfortunately, a virtual machine such as the JVM with a largegarbage-collected heap is very sensitive to swapping. As describedabove, swapping improves memory usage and has little performance impactas long as the memory usage frequency is non-uniform, i.e. some parts ofmemory are used more often that other parts. Since the Java heap isfully used before a garbage collection is triggered, the live Javaobjects are often spread out uniformly over the Java heap. Thus when thegarbage collection is performed and the live objects are traced andfound, reads must be performed randomly over the whole Java heap duringthe short period when the garbage collector is active. If the whole heapcannot be kept in memory, (i.e. some parts always have to be swappedout), then the garbage collection trace, which examines in random ordermost of the Java heap, will cause the garbage collection to slow down,perhaps to an almost complete standstill.

A hypervisor using a balloon driver can therefore not tune the memoryusage of a guest operating system running a JVM without severelyaffecting the performance of the JVM. This is a serious drawback thatreduces the efficiency of any garbage-collected virtual machine runningin a virtual server environment. Any new technique to improve the memoryusage of garbage-collected virtual machines running as guests within ahypervisor would increase the savings generated by servervirtualization.

Improved Memory Usage in Virtual Machines Running as Hypervisor Guests

Disclosed herein is a system and method to improve memory usage invirtual machines, or other garbage collected runtime environments,running as hypervisor guests. As described above, current techniques forhypervisor control of guest operating systems severely affect theperformance of a virtual machine running inside the guest operatingsystem. An embodiment of the present invention addresses this problem byproviding a system and method to improve memory usage in virtualmachines, or other garbage collected runtime environments, running ashypervisor guests. An embodiment addresses this problem by providing asystem and method to improve memory usage in virtual machines, or othergarbage collected runtime environments, running as hypervisor guests. Inaccordance with an embodiment, the system provides for changing thememory usage of a virtual machine on request from a hypervisor,comprising: a hypervisor; a guest operating system executing inside thehypervisor; a communication channel between the hypervisor and the guestoperating system; a balloon driver in the guest operating system; avirtual machine for executing a software application; a communicationchannel between the balloon driver and the virtual machine; a memoryspace or heap for use by the virtual machine in storing software objectsand pointers as part of the software application; and a compactinggarbage collector for use by the virtual machine.

FIG. 1 shows an illustration of a system in accordance with anembodiment that improves memory usage of virtual machines running asguests within a hypervisor. As shown in FIG. 1, the system 101 comprisesa server 102 that further comprises a computer hardware 103. Thecomputer hardware is running a hypervisor 104. The hypervisor is runningtwo guest operating systems 105 and 106. Each operating system containsa balloon driver 107 and 108 respectively. The hypervisor controls thememory usage of the guest operating systems using channels 109 and 110respectively.

In accordance with an embodiment, a first Java Virtual Machine 111 runsas a process within the guest operating system 105. When the applicationsoftware is running it makes use of the Java heap 112, which containsunused free memory 113 and used memory containing live Java objects 114.The heap is garbage collected by a compacting garbage collector 115. Acompacting garbage collector selects an area of the Java heap at eachgarbage collection, and moves the selected Java objects close to eachother, to create large areas of unused memory. The balloon driver 107controls the memory usage of the JVM 111 using the channel 116.

In accordance with an embodiment, the second guest operating system 106with its JVM 117 has a smaller Java heap 118 with more unused space 119,and less live data 120. It also has a compacting garbage collector 121.The memory usage operating system JVM 117 is controlled by the balloondriver 108 using the channel 122.

FIG. 2 shows a schematic of the memory layout in accordance with anembodiment, illustrating the Java heap before and after the heap sizehas been reduced. As shown in FIG. 2, the Java heap 201 contains severalJava objects 202 that are randomly spread out over the heap. Inaccordance with an embodiment, the Java heap is reduced so that thereduced Java heap 206 contains the same Java objects 204, but theobjects are instead all moved closer to each other, i.e. they arecompacted. This makes possible to remove the end 205 of the Java heap.

FIG. 3 shows a schematic of the memory layout in accordance with anembodiment, illustrating when two OS/JVM guests are running within ahypervisor. As shown in FIG. 3, the hypervisor RAM 301 is being used fortwo guest OS/JVMs, with Java heaps 302 and 303. The Java heaps alsocontain Java objects 304 and 305 respectively.

FIG. 4 shows a schematic of the memory layout in accordance with anembodiment, illustrating when a third or subsequent OS/JVM guest hasbeen added to the hypervisor. As shown in FIG. 4, the hypervisor RAM 301contains two original guests 402 and 403. In accordance with anembodiment the Java objects 404 and 405 in these heaps are compacted tomake it possible to reduce 406 their sizes, and to create a new Javaheap with the newly acquired memory 407. The new Java heap 407 can thenbe used by the new OS/JVM guest to store Java objects 408.

FIG. 5 shows a flowchart in accordance with an embodiment, illustratingthe reallocation of hypervisor RAM. As shown in FIG. 5, in accordancewith an embodiment the process begins at block 501 when the hypervisordecides that reallocation of physical RAM is necessary. In block 502,resize commands are sent to the different guests. In block 503, theguest operating system balloon driver examines the operating systemstatus, to determine if a JVM with a large heap is running. If this isthe case, then in block 504 the balloon driver sends a resize command tothe JVM. If the JVM has to reduce the size of the heap, then, in block505, it compacts the heap using a compacting garbage collector to beable to reduce the heap size. If the JVM has to increase the size of theheap, then it can simply increase the heap size. The JVM also reportsback this information. In block 506, the balloon driver examines the newstatus of the operating system. If the JVM resize could not be fullyperformed, then the balloon driver might have to inflate the balloonanyway, as a final resort. In block 507, the hypervisor memoryreallocation is completed when all of the balloon drivers and JVMs haveperformed their memory usage reallocation and reported back.

As described above, the Java heap size is quite flexible. With a Javaheap that is slightly larger than the live data, the garbage collectionwill be performed often, and will require a large percentage of theavailable CPU resources. Increasing the Java heap size will immediatelylower the number of garbage collections performed, and increase systemperformance. Embodiments of the present invention as described abovemake it possible to use the flexibility of the Java heap size toaccommodate the needs of several JVMs running within a singlehypervisor. With this embodiment, graceful degradation can be achievedwhen more JVMs are added to the same server. Otherwise, the JvMs mightstop working efficiently as soon as the balloon driver forces the gueststo swap.

In accordance with another embodiment, the balloon driver can controlthe heap size of the virtual machine using the balloon driver to virtualmachine communication channel.

In accordance with another embodiment, the hypervisor can divideavailable physical RAM evenly or in a specified proportion between thevirtual machine heaps.

In accordance with another embodiment, the hypervisor can set differentheap sizes for different virtual machines to guarantee conformance toservice level contracts which are different for each virtual machine.

In accordance with another embodiment, the operating system can bespecifically tailored to run only a single virtual machine with noswapping and no other user processes.

The present invention may be conveniently implemented using aconventional general purpose or a specialized digital computer ormicroprocessor programmed according to the teachings of the presentdisclosure. Appropriate software coding can readily be prepared byskilled programmers based on the teachings of the present disclosure, aswill be apparent to those skilled in the software art.

In some embodiments, the present invention includes a computer programproduct which is a storage medium (media) having instructions storedthereon/in which can be used to program a computer to perform any of theprocesses of the present invention. The storage medium can include, butis not limited to, any type of disk including floppy disks, opticaldiscs, DVD, CD-ROMs, microdrive, and magneto-optical disks, ROMs, RAMs,EPROMs, EEPROMs, DRAMs, VRAMs, flash memory devices, magnetic or opticalcards, nanosystems (including molecular memory ICs), or any type ofmedia or device suitable for storing instructions and/or data.

The foregoing description of the present invention has been provided forthe purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to beexhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise forms disclosed.Many modifications and variations will be apparent to the practitionerskilled in the art. Particularly, it will be evident that while theexamples described herein illustrate how the features may be used in aJRockit environment, other application servers, virtual machines, JVMs,computing environments, and software development systems may use andbenefit from the invention. The code examples given are presented forpurposes of illustration. It will be evident that the techniquesdescribed herein may be applied using other code languages, and withdifferent code.

The embodiments were chosen and described in order to best explain theprinciples of the invention and its practical application, therebyenabling others skilled in the art to understand the invention forvarious embodiments and with various modifications that are suited tothe particular use contemplated. It is intended that the scope of theinvention be defined by the following claims and their equivalence.

1. A system that improves memory usage in virtual machines running ashypervisor guests, comprising: a computer hardware or machine; ahypervisor executing on the computer hardware or machine; one or moreguest operating systems executing as guests within the hypervisor,wherein each of the one or more guest operating systems has associatedtherewith a balloon driver, a virtual machine, for executing a softwareapplication, a memory space or heap for use by the virtual machine instoring software objects and pointers as part of the softwareapplication, and a garbage collector for use by the virtual machine ingarbage collecting of software objects within the memory space or heap;and wherein the system receives information about the usage of thememory space or heap by the virtual machine, and uses the balloon driverto control the use of the compacting garbage collector and to manage thememory space or heap size as necessary for use by the one or more guestoperating systems executing as guests within the hypervisor.
 2. Thesystem of claim 1, further comprising: a plurality of guest operatingsystems executing as guests within the hypervisor; a communicationchannel between the hypervisor and each of the plurality of guestoperating systems executing as guests within the hypervisor; for each ofthe plurality of guest operating systems executing as guests within thehypervisor a communication channel between the balloon driver in thatguest operating system and a virtual machine associated or running onthat guest operating system; and wherein the hypervisor manages thememory space or heap size of the plurality of guest operating systemsusing the channels.
 3. The system of claim 1, wherein the balloon drivercontrols the heap size of the virtual machine using the balloon driverto virtual machine communication channel.
 4. The system of claim 1,wherein the hypervisor divides available physical RAM evenly or in aspecified portion between the virtual machine heaps.
 5. The system ofclaim 1, wherein the hypervisor can set different heap sizes fordifferent virtual machines to guarantee conformance to service levelcontracts which are different for each virtual machine.
 6. The system ofclaim 1, wherein the operating system is specifically tailored to runonly a single virtual machine with no swapping and no other userprocesses.
 7. A method for improving memory usage in virtual machinesrunning as hypervisor guests, comprising the steps of executing ahypervisor on a computer hardware or machine; providing one or moreguest operating systems executing as guests within the hypervisor,wherein each of the one or more guest operating systems has associatedtherewith a balloon driver, a virtual machine, for executing a softwareapplication, a memory space or heap for use by the virtual machine instoring software objects and pointers as part of the softwareapplication, and a garbage collector for use by the virtual machine ingarbage collecting of software objects within the memory space or heap;and receiving information about the usage of the memory space or heap bythe virtual machine, and using the balloon driver to control the use ofthe compacting garbage collector and to manage the memory space or heapsize as necessary for use by the one or more guest operating systemsexecuting as guests within the hypervisor.
 8. The method of claim 7,further comprising: providing a plurality of guest operating systemsexecuting as guests within the hypervisor; providing a communicationchannel between the hypervisor and each of the plurality of guestoperating systems executing as guests within the hypervisor; providing,for each of the plurality of guest operating systems executing as guestswithin the hypervisor, a communication channel between the balloondriver in that guest operating system and a virtual machine associatedor running on that guest operating system; and allowing the hypervisorto manage the memory space or heap size of the plurality of guestoperating systems using the channels.
 9. The method of claim 7, whereinthe balloon driver controls the heap size of the virtual machine usingthe balloon driver to virtual machine communication channel.
 10. Themethod of claim 7, wherein the hypervisor divides available physical RAMevenly or in a specified portion between the virtual machine heaps. 11.The method of claim 7, wherein the hypervisor can set different heapsizes for different virtual machines to guarantee conformance to servicelevel contracts which are different for each virtual machine.
 12. Themethod of claim 7, wherein the operating system is specifically tailoredto run only a single virtual machine with no swapping and no other userprocesses.
 13. A method for improving memory usage in virtual machinesrunning as hypervisor guests, comprising the steps of: executing ahypervisor on a computer hardware or machine; providing one or moreguest operating systems executing as guests within the hypervisor,wherein each of the one or more guest operating systems has associatedtherewith a balloon driver, a virtual machine, for executing a softwareapplication, a memory space or heap for use by the virtual machine instoring software objects and pointers as part of the softwareapplication, and a garbage collector for use by the virtual machine ingarbage collecting of software objects within the memory space or heap;determining by the hypervisor that reallocation of physical RAM in thesystem is necessary; sending resize commands to the one or more guestoperating systems; examining at each guest operating system balloondriver the status of the corresponding operating system, to determine ifa virtual machine with a large heap is running; if a virtual machinewith a large heap is running, then sending a resize command to thevirtual machine, and if the virtual machine has to reduce the size ofthe heap, then allowing the virtual machine to compact the heap, andreport back this information; and reallocating the hypervisor memory asnecessary until each of the balloon drivers and virtual machines haveperformed any necessary memory space or heap reallocation and reportedback.
 14. The method of claim 13, wherein, if the virtual machine has toincrease the size of the heap, then allowing it to increase the heapsize.
 15. The method of claim 13, wherein if the reduction in size couldnot be fully performed, then allowing the balloon driver to inflate aballoon.